Medical News Today recently reported on a little girl named Ruby living in the UK with severe quadriplegic cerebral palsy (visit our Cerebral Palsy page to learn more about Quadriplegic CP). At birth, Ruby was deprived of oxygen for half an hour, leaving her with permanent brain damage that makes everyday life incredibly challenging. Ruby is highly intelligent and struggles with communicating her thoughts and needs because of her physical limitations.

Until recently, Ruby was forced to use laminated symbols to communicate with her therapists, friends, and family. During school, Ruby would have to spend a long time trying to point her eyes in the right direction to let people know which letters she was trying to use to spell out a word. Over time, her parents sought out better, more technological solutions that would allow her to express herself more easily. After a long period of trial and error with various devices, they set their sights on eye gaze technology, whereby a person communicates through a computer with a pointer that tracks their eye movements and can make a “click” or selection by blinking or staring. For someone like Ruby who struggles with coordination and motor skills, eye gazing technology can mean a significantly better lifestyle.

At first, Ruby was denied coverage and grant money for the eye gazing technology. With the right amount of persistence and charity fundraising, eventually Ruby received enough funding to buy portable eye gazing technology with an appropriately sized screen. With the Tobii I-12 eye tracker, Ruby’s able to communicate with her peers and caretakers like never before. The miraculous device has allowed Ruby to feel more independent and participate in situations that were previously implausible.

Although Ruby received the device she was aiming for, she will need continuous updates and additional software as time goes on. Her family is continuing fundraising efforts in order to keep Ruby up-to-date with the latest and greatest technology to aid in her communicating with others. To donate to Ruby’s cause, visit their page here.

Dr. Craig Spencer, an American physician who selflessly joined Doctors Without Borders on a mission to Guinea to aid in the Ebola crisis, has been officially diagnosed with Ebola. The NYC emergency room doctor made his return to the US about a week ago after he spent some time abroad treating patients in dire need. Spencer went about his normal life for a few days in NYC until he developed a fever and diarrhea, at which point he immediately reported his symptoms to authorities so that he could be quarantined and treated accordingly.

Many NYC residents are panicking because of the contagious nature of the Ebola virus. However, experts and authorities maintain that the odds of Dr. Spencer having infected other NYC residents are extremely low. As of now, his fiancée and two friends he had spent time with upon his return to the city have been isolated and examined. Fortunately, none of them are showing signs nor experiencing symptoms of the virus.

NYC’s Mayor Bill de Blasio reacted quickly to the widespread panic and has continuously assured NYC residents that they have no reason to be alarmed. Since the virus becomes more contagious as the afflicted become increasingly ill, Dr. Spencer was not infectious until he developed his first set of symptoms. At this point, it is unclear how Dr. Spencer was exposed to the virus, as he took strict precautions throughout his time in West Africa.

The CDC has dispatched an Ebola response team to NYC in order to ensure that all health hazards and potential points of contact have been handled per protocol. Dr. Spencer personally followed all protocols set out by Doctors Without Borders once he returned home from his mission, including taking his temperature twice daily and checking in with a health official every 24 hours. Fortunately, he had not returned to work at an NYC hospital.

As of now, Dr. Spencer is in stable condition and remains isolated while he receives treatment. Officials are considering the idea that all doctors returning from missions in West Africa should isolate themselves for a period of time even in the absence of symptoms as an extra added precaution. Although “the risk [of spread] isn’t zero” according to an official in Guinea who works with Doctors Without Borders, health officials are confident that they have kept the potential for spreading in this country to a minimum.

A team at the University of Connecticut is in the process of developing a clinically safe and personalized ovarian cancer vaccine. After four years of investigation, the team has succeeded in creating a vaccine that leaves mice resistant to cancer cells. They are now in the process of submitting the vaccine to the FDA for approval so that it can begin moving through clinical trials with the eventual goal of widespread implementation (assuming, of course, that the vaccine is as successful in humans as it has been in lab mice). Dr. Pramod Srivastava, one of the study’s principal investigators, comments, “this has the potential to dramatically change how we treat cancer”.

Typically, when ‘bad’ cells attack our bodies, our immune system fights them off. Our immune system cannot always detect cancerous cells because of their many similarities to normal, healthy cells. A piece of information that our immune system uses to gauge a cell’s danger level is a protein sequence called an epitope. By closely comparing epitopes from healthy mice tissue to epitopes from cancerous mice tissue, the researchers were able to create a vaccine that will help the immune system to recognize the ‘bad’ cancerous cells and get rid of them. To everyone’s benefit, the vaccine the researchers developed as a result of their investigation was successful in creating a resistance to cancer in mice.

The researchers chose to try their vaccine on ovarian cancer because it is generally very responsive to surgery and chemotherapy but carries a greater risk of return within 1-2 years.

As the 5th leading cause of death in American women, ovarian cancer provides an urgent starting point and a “perfect window” for clinical trials—the physicians could know within a few short years whether or not the vaccine works or needs further development.

Although years will pass before the vaccine moves through clinical trials and into regular treatment plans, these findings are very encouraging in our ongoing fight against cancer. Those with family histories of cancer and/or those with abnormal symptoms a doctor considers concerning should be undergoing regular screening tests to rule out warning signs of cancer such as precancerous cells. The earlier that cancer is found, the better one’s prognosis becomes. If you or a loved one has experienced a devastating delay in the diagnosis of cancer, contact our firm for a free consultation. To read more about cancer misdiagnosis, visit our cancer misdiagnosis webpage. To read more about UConn’s exciting announcement on the ovarian cancer vaccine, visit their public release here. To read more about ovarian cancer and US statistics, visit the American Cancer Society’s ovarian cancer page.

Many fear the spread of Ebola to the US despite the CDC’s best efforts to prevent this from occurring. Over the summer, we blogged about the staggering reality that preventable medical mistakes are the USA’s third leading cause of death. The Ebola patient’s recent passing has left people bewildered as to why this patient was not quarantined and treated upon his initial visit to the Texas hospital ER. Once released, he came into contact with over 80 healthy individuals, putting them at risk for catching the virus and promoting its potential to spread further.

It seems that even though our nation is experiencing a widespread problem with medical negligence, Texas “has it worse”. According to Texas Watch in Dallas, patient rights have been almost completely squashed since the passing of Proposition 12 in 2003, which placed harsh restrictions on the ability of victims of medical malpractice to file a legal suit against their medical providers. A Texan cardiologist named Dr. Mittler explains, “What Texans aren’t aware of is the legislators have required a standard of care so low it borders on almost no care”. This frightening reality is spreading like wildfire as our nation mourns the loss of Thomas Eric Duncan. His family and all of those who knew him are in our thoughts and prayers.

Although we can’t necessarily prevent medical mistakes from taking place, we can at the very least educate people on how to get justice once they occur. Here at Weiss & Paarz, we have been fighting tragic incidents of medical malpractice for over 30 years. Our dedicated attorneys have spent their careers helping families whose lives have been tragically altered due to a preventable medical error. If you or a loved one has been a victim of medical negligence, the best thing to do is to reach out to a qualified attorney as soon as possible to explore your potential claim.

ABC News recently reported on the latest breaking update in the Ebola crisis as it has officially made its way to the United States this past week. The Ebola outbreak began in West Africa in March of 2014 and has since infected over 7,000 people. The latest news story involves a man who had recently traveled from West Africa to Texas and presented to the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital feeling ill with characteristic symptoms. He was controversially discharged with antibiotics after having mentioned that he had been in West Africa to a nurse on staff. Many are outraged by the ease with which this patient was discharged despite the CDC’s recent focus on ensuring hospitals are well-equipped to both recognize and appropriately treat anyone having traveled from West Africa (presenting with certain symptoms) as potential Ebola candidates.

A few days later, the man’s illness further developed and he has since been officially diagnosed with Ebola. He is now in critical condition and has been strictly quarantined. His family was ordered not to leave their home, which is in the process of sterilizing to prevent further infection. Officials are now examining all the people that may have come into close enough contact with this patient to contract the Ebola virus. They are reportedly using a wide and cautious net in their search for points of contact and have identified approximately 100 people at risk with 10 of them considered to be at high risk.

Critics of the Texas hospital have cited medical negligence as the reason for this potential outbreak, which is hopefully being nipped in the bud by officials hard at work to ensure the avoidance of a national health crisis. The hospital, however, has cited that the error was caused by their internal records system, which was set up so that the travel history gathered by the nurse on staff was never presented to the physician working in the ER that night. Texas Health Presbyterian has since changed their system so as to prevent this potential hazard from occurring in the future, especially given the ongoing threat of Ebola.